Truck Parking Shortage Puts Pressure on US Supply Chain

A gas station and convenience store in Fayetteville on Interstate 49 is a popular parking spot for many truckers. (Michael Woods)

For many truck drivers, the daily shift ends with the same frustration: finding a place to park for the night.

This problem didn’t suddenly crop up. In October, the nonprofit American Transportation Research Institute released its annual report on the most pressing issues in the industry, and for the second consecutive year, the availability of truck parking ranked second overall.

Truck parking has been a top five industry issue every year since 2015. For drivers, parking was the No. 1 concern.

“We need to find solutions but, honestly, I’ve been on this job since 1993, and one of the initial studies when I first started was looking at truck parking,” said ATRI President Rebecca Brewster. “This has been an issue that’s been around for three decades at least. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, unfortunately.”

A 2019 report by the Federal Highway Administration showed there were 313,000 truck parking spaces in the U.S., or 1 for every 11 trucks on the road. The lack of parking is a critical issue  because it affects safety and efficiency.

Research has shown that truck drivers average nearly an hour a day looking for a place to park rather than continuing with their deliveries. The ATRI said three-quarters of truck drivers report having problems finding adequate parking at least once a week.

Drivers who can’t find legal places to park — dedicated public facilities such as former weigh stations or a commercial truck stop — often have to improvise, pulling off on interstate ramps or in abandoned lots. They don’t have a choice because federal hours-of-service laws mandate rest: The drivers have to park somewhere or break the law.

“Parking is important to the supply chain,” said Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association. “It’s a very precarious situation that we’ve created.”

Some Progress

The state of Arkansas made a small dent in its problems when the state Department of Transportation spent $6 million to expand an existing lot on Interstate 40 in West Memphis by 84 spaces in 2023. Eighty-four more spaces is better than 84 fewer, but the supply-and-demand gulf remains immense.

The problem was exacerbated by years of poor funding.

Arkansas, for instance, continually struggled with infrastructure funding until laws passed in the past few years.

When funds were tight, truck parking wasn’t a priority compared to repairing highways or bridges.

“We’re obviously not in a good place, and we got to this not-so-great place from a very long period of underfunding infrastructure,” Newton said.

“When we were, as [former ARDOT Director] Scott Bennett infamously said, managing the decline of the system, adding things like truck parking were not on the list. Things fell to the wayside when in a different environment, with adequate funding and a prioritization and an awareness of this issue, different decisions would have been made at that time.”

The lack of funds meant abandoning welcome centers (such as the West Memphis facility) and rest areas rotted rather than be converted into truck stops.

Newton and Brewster are optimistic that the information tide has shifted, because there is a growing public awareness of the importance of drivers having a safe place to park and rest.

“Pick your issue: Whether your issue is efficiency of the supply chain, if your issue is environmental, if your issue is driver lifestyle, if your issue is safety, then truck parking is a major component of all of those,” Newton said. “Without adequate truck parking, all of those are negatively impacted. This is not a luxury. This is something that is essential for the driver to be able to operate both safely and legally. We do not have enough spaces to meet the needs.”

Solutions in the Offing

The federal government seems interested in helping. A bipartisan bill, the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, was introduced in Congress earlier this year, proposing $755 million in grant funding for truck parking expansion.

Private industry has a role to play, too. Commercial lots associated with truck stops — stop for gas at one and you can see a line of tractors idling the night away — are popular, but companies such as TRUX Parking of Little Rock are also trying to help.

TRUX is led by CEO Danny Loe, a former executive with ArcBest Corp. of Fort Smith. TRUX has a truck parking management division dedicated to opening and operating lots, and a software function that helps drivers learn what lots have openings.

Loe said he knows drivers who will stop at an open lot three hours short of the hours-of-service deadline rather than risk getting caught without a place to park. A system letting drivers know what is available, and where, would help and allow trucking companies to plan a trip’s logistics before the driver ever leaves home.

“The stats are for every 11 trucks on the road, there’s one parking spot, and whether that’s off slightly or not, there’s obviously a strong need for additional truck parking,” Loe said. “If you even try to catch up with the 1 to 11, which will take many, many years to get to that point, unless you have predictability and reservability for those spots, you’ll have to build this overabundance of parking spaces. It does me no good if I don’t know if it is filled up or not.”

The ATRI said the major obstacles are lack of funding, lack of suitable land and community resistance to truck parking lots. The West Memphis expansion costs more than $71,000 a spot; ATRI research showed that the average spot nationally costs more than $113,000.